Coming back to Baltimore puts me on edge. After months of living away, I’ve grown
accustomed to a quieter, gentler, lifestyle.
As I drove up North Charles Street, a car traveling about 70 mph, passed
me recklessly on my right--only to be stopped at the same red light that I am. I pulled up alongside the car, my disgust emanating
from me, to get a good look at the driver.
The driver was waiting for me.
She already had her window down and, as soon as she saw my face, she
started screaming. “You want….blah blah
blah.?” Repeat: “You want…..blah blah blah?” A chant.
She was having a great time, her eyes twinkling throwing her full body
into her chant. This was legitimate
entertainment for her.
I couldn’t hear her, and for a moment, I considered rolling
down the window so that I could. But
that seemed risky and all at once, I felt a tickle of uneasiness creep over me. She might have a gun. It is impossible to know. It is not a ridiculous possibility. I looked her over and made a decision: She was harmless. The only power she would hold over me is the
power to intimidate me. I smiled. Not
toward her, but as I looked straight ahead.
Honey, I thought, you’ve got nothing on me. I am at least as crazy as you. You might have a gun, but I am not
afraid. I refuse. And with that, the light changed and we both
took off.
I had bigger fish to fry.
I was on my way to see Apples &
Oranges, the new grocery store opened by Michele Speaks and Erich March, the
multi generationally run funeral home, March Funeral Homes. I’ve known Michele for years and have watched
her talent across a number of platforms, including a stint as a board member to
the department of recreation and parks, where she built partnerships with
businesses leading to rec center renovations.
I knew her to be willing to speak her mind--smart, with attitude. She has a huge smile that she flashes frequently,
she is impossibly skinny, and when she laughs, she throws her head back.
As I drove across North Avenue to Apples & Oranges, I
thought about Baltimore. It does feel
out of control to me. But it always
has. So why does it bother me now? At the intersection of North and Greenmount
Avenues, I noticed that the fence around the empty lot on the NW corner had a knitted
sweater. Provided by some
artist/activists, it could be a sign of hope offered out by one of Baltimore’s
great strengths right now, a robust and active artist community. The streets were lined with vacant houses and
the streets littered with trash. Despite
an administration that has pledged 10,000 new residents over the next 10 years,
Baltimore feels like a city in retreat.
Michele and Erich felt that they could no longer sit on the
sidelines watching people die from heart disease and other food related
illnesses. In Baltimore, it is possible
to have a life expectancy vary by 20 years depending on your address. And many of these deaths are
preventable. Too many of these people
were ending up at their funeral home, their lives cut short by heart disease,
obesity, diabetes, and more. Deaths by
violence get a lot of media attention, but the deaths through preventable
disease are frequently overlooked. The
fact that all of this exists in the shadow of one of the greatest health
institutions of the world, the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions, provides an
ironic backdrop.
So, in the absence of anyone else stepping forward, Erich
and Michele took a huge risk and opened a grocery store offering fresh produce
in the heart of one of Baltimore’s food deserts a block away from one of their
funeral homes. When I stepped into the
store, I was struck by the orderliness and cleanliness of the store, the
beautiful displays of fresh produce, and the fact that there were not a lot of
customers. I quickly found Michele and
we found a place to sit in her “community area”. She had some funny stories to tell and some
haunting ones as well. She was active in
the store daily and witnessed the behaviors that were leading to those health
statistics. And there were glimpses of
hope too. After one very obese woman
defiantly defended her poor eating habits, Michele told her to think about the
fact that she won’t be able to see her children and grandchildren into old
age. The woman hugged Michele and told
her that she “would try to do better”.
Other customers got advice too.
One woman’s entire cart was emptied and restocked with fresh foods in
favor of frozen. She was given cooking
instructions. At Apples & Oranges,
the customers were family. Apples &
Oranges is on the front lines of enormous social challenges and Michele is
developing partnerships to help bridge some of those challenges.
When I asked her about her numbers, she said they were
behind projections. I was reminded of my
own past struggles with Urbanite and
the struggles of the farmers that I had met over the past year. To boost sales, she was growing her catering
business. Some local businesses and institutions
saw the value in having fresh food in the neighborhood and were making a point
to purchase catered meals to boost sales.
I, too, began to notice the steady stream of Hopkins students coming by
to pick up lunch. There seemed to be the
ingredients for success, a luncheon clientele and a steady catering business. On the flip side, the realities of selling
fresh food in a food desert were becoming clear to Michelle. For too long the people in this neighborhood
have gone without a grocery store. They
have developed habits, behaviors and even a taste for processed, high calorie,
low cost food corn based foods. And
these habits will be difficult to change.
The challenges faced by Michele and Erich at Apples &
Oranges illuminate the relationship between poverty, food choices, and health
outcomes. Federal agriculture subsidy programs,
developed to ensure our nation’s ability to feed itself, have led us to a point
where we are only beginning to understand the costs of those policies. Unfortunately, for the most poverty stricken,
it is costing them their lives.
